The Duck-Rabbit Conspiracy Revealed!!

Take a look at this picture... It's a rabbit, right? Don't be so sure. Try tilting your head to the right...

Still think it's a rabbit? Or does it look more like some kind of bird? Those cute little bunny ears suddenly look more like a beak, don't they? And instead of big bunny feet for hopping around, there's a pair of wings neatly folded away...

Alright, so it's missing a pair of bird feet, but that's not the issue. They're obviously folded away somewhere inside out of sight. In fact, that little cotton tail could quite easily be the ends of the bird's feet sticking out a little.

Alright, try looking at this one. I know what you're thinking, it's a duck. But tilt your head to the left, and it looks like a rabbit, doesn't it? The beak becomes the ears, just like last time but in reverse.

'So what?' I hear you cry. 'It's just an optical illusion.' Ah, but that's where you're wrong. This 'optical illusion' actually conceals an amazing truth. After much time spent painstakingly making observations and gathering data, I can finally reveal that in actual fact ducks and rabbits are one and the same. Same beings, just two different disguises.

At it like rabbits

Just stop and think for a minute. How many baby ducks do you see? A few, sure, but nowhere near enough for the number of ducks there seems to be. Those occasional strings of ducklings you see are just the talented ones, the ones who've got the hang of the avian form and the swimming quickly. They're just there to lull you into a false sense of security. All the babies are actually made in the rabbit form. I mean, everyone knows that rabbits are constantly at it. They're famous for it.

I believe that there are a couple of reasons for this. One is, of course, that it's a whole lot easier to do without all those feathers getting in the way. The other is that it's safer for the babies themselves. They don't have to worry about learning to swim straight away, and they can spend their time underground safe from predators.

Nice weather for ducks

Another standard phrase, yes? Ah, but it's more than that. It relates to the fact that when it rains, the duck form is more convenient. Those feathers are nice and waterproof, whereas there's nothing worse than soggy fur.

I believe that our primitive ancestors were aware of the connection between ducks and rabbits. They knew that they were both the same being. But at some point we allowed science to take over. We looked at ducks, and we looked at rabbits, and we decided they had to be different creatures because they looked different. Since they're always careful to change somewhere private (they're just as shy as you or me about being caught in a state of undress) we refused to believe that such a transformation was actually happening. The empiricist method let us down once again.

But some kind of racial memory must have persisted. The sayings, the picture up above, they all point to an underlying suspicion. Somewhere, deep down, we still know that ducks and rabbits are the same but we refuse to fully believe it.

A new age of enlightenment

So what now? How should we respond to this revelation? Well, obviously the first thing is not to panic. I don't believe that the duck-rabbits mean us any harm. There aren't exactly large lists of people who've been savaged by them in either form (leaving aside 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', of course, since that wasn't real). And I don't think they've ever really tried to keep it a secret, so we shouldn't worry about them turning on us in an attempt to keep the truth from getting out. Certainly, I never ran into any trouble whilst gathering the data to confirm my theory.

This could be the start of a new age, with humans and duck-rabbits living together in harmony and truth. Who knows, they might have things they could teach us. They could have been responsible for humanity getting itself out of the trees in the first place.

On the other hand, maybe they're just trying to lull us into a false sense of security. Maybe they knew that if they threatened me whilst I was researching them, then I'd know I was on to something big. Maybe they're waiting until we come to them and ask to be taught, and then they'll turn into something else, something vicious, and wipe us all out in one fell swoop.